The Car Shopping Round (Round 64): Tears in Heaven

Community Challenges & Competitions
2987

I remember a 70s car challenge that had a 15 entry cap and a 1-2 week deadline (so fast compared to all the 2+ week deadlines at the time) and the entries filled up within a few days, leaving many who were interested stuck on the sidelines.

What’s different about the CSR compared to most challenges is what’s been somewhat pointed out earlier: it’s different. Most challenges are a race of some kind, where maxing out sportiness within certain limits is essentially what’s going on. I personally prefer the challenges that have me design a consumer car of some kind, rather than yet another track car.
The push for a quick turnaround helps keep the appeal to this challenge as something that can be returned to again and again for something different. While I understand the long delay for reviews due to people wanting to make the most of their chance as roundmaster, I haven’t seen anyone complain about reviews kept in a short paragraph and without any Photoshop work on the cars. The “1 week turnaround” as a lenient rule (it did used to be enforced rather strictly) allows the challenge to not sit idle for too long, so I think it’s better to have it want to be short but with extensions when needed than being long with a lot of down time during some rounds.

8 Likes
2988

Totally agree with all of you - If I were to win a round of this challenge, and decided to host the next round, I’d also rather review every car as soon as I received them, but I’d keep it concise and honest in each case.

Edit: whether or not this thread reverts to a fast-paced contest or continues to rely on time-consuming but deep writeups, CSR must remain enjoyable for all hosts and entrants.

2989

question is, what do people want?

  • going back to the roots of simple-to-do challenges and quick turnaround time?
  • high-quality and complex results but takes a long time to do?

i say, we need a poll

2990

In my opinion, the beauty of the CSR is that it varies from person to person. Some take a long time with reviews, others bang them out on time. Some challenges are easy, others are hard.

If the CSR has evolved from being quick one-week-enforced rounds to one week plus a little for reviews, that’s fine by me.

I just don’t want to see it stray too far from the roots it has. I kinda like the one-week-submission format, it keeps the pace up by being self-limiting. If it ran for more than a week, it’d need a numbers cap, and those really aren’t fun, having been on the wrong side a few times where I thought, “Gee, if only I’d gotten there a day sooner, I’d have been in this.” and then criticizing the under-performers harshly because I could’ve done better if they hadn’t dropped a day-one-stinker.

(and yes, this is why I’ve trained myself to have such immediate results when a CSR comes up. Too many challenges where trying to do it right means that you’ll fall on your face instead by being excluded.)

At the same time, I think we need to establish an acceptable maximum timeframe for writing the reviews. I know that’ll unfortunately limit the depth of some of the reviews, but I feel that perhaps compromises must be made in order to keep the challenge going.

I’d like to propose an idea:
We keep the 1-week to build and submit, sticking with the core that has worked for so long. We offer a 4 day expected turnaround for reviews, unless the current roundmaster requests an extension for the remainder of that week (a 3 day extension, making a total of 7 days, total turnaround being 14 days.) That should allow enough time to write up a suitable set of reviews and yet still keep the pacing up.

Edit:
I also feel we need to have a pre-established strategy in place, in the event a roundmaster exceeds the 7 day review turnaround time limit. The 4 day soft cap should be exactly that, a courtesy call, but not a demand. On day 7, we should see reviews, and if they’re not up by day 8, we need some way to fairly draw a new roundmaster. It sounds harsh, but I’m not the kind of guy to dance around the bushes to avoid a difficult topic. If I were running a round and promised reviews by day 7, I’d expect people to be pissed at me if I decided to put up reviews by day 9. It’d also give incentive toward content first (numbers, placing, etc.) and then making it pretty.

6 Likes
2991

but it’s already at a 2 week turnaround right now. as i said, it’s now a bi-weekly/2 weeks turnaround

but even at 2 weeks turnaround. we are already having this conversation. which means some of us are already feeling like it’s a bit too long.

maybe 2-4day reviews result? so it has to be a really short reviews.

1 Like
2992

I just threw an idea out there. My main thought is this:

It takes us a week to build it, but not everyone takes a week, most of us can knock a CSR car together in a few hours and have it in the upper half. I voted for 4 days, because that’s roughly half a week. Four days should be more than enough time to knock together some reviews. I voted to offer an extension of three days if it was asked for, implying that the current roundmaster did what you and Rk38 did, where you were in constant communication with those of us in the round. The idea being that it’d be a “Hey, do you guys mind if we take a little extra time to finish these reviews up?” instead of dead space for a week or more.

At the same time, having that sword hanging over every roundmaster’s head, that if you don’t get your reviews out by the end of week two, we come up with a fair system to select the new roundmaster, and you lose your chance, that should speed up the review process.

As for a fair system, my vote would be random number generator with an exclusions rule.

Essentially, everyone who entered the round that fizzled is entered into the drawing. A number is assigned to each person who entered. A random number generator draws a number, and if that person has won one of the CSR’s within, say, the last 5 rounds, they’re excluded in the interest of not having someone just running round after round after round. If you’ve been excluded, draw another random number.

As for why exclusions instead of letting that person pick the new roundmaster, it’s to avoid popularity being a way to get in.

2 Likes
2993

I think the main reason for the 1 week build time is that while it might only take a few hours to make a car, some people only have 1 or 2 days of the week where they have that free time to do so. I realise I made a 6 day round, but that was mainly due to the previous roundmaster taking a bit of extra time for the reviews and me wanting to get it back on the same schedule. I didn’t get any complaints from that, so a bit shorter for that reason seems to be okay (it did cover weekend time).

As for how long it takes to write reviews, that entirely depends on the person writing them. It seems that 23-24 is the norm for entries at this point, a far cry from the original dozen or so, so the in-depth reviews are expected to take longer. Some people just write slower, others want to add all the details, etc. Going back again to when I was roundmaster, in order to save myself some time, I organised a concise but fairly detailed format for each review so that each car got analysed in the same manner and that prevented me from going off on a tangent for some of them. Anything additional had to fit within a couple of sentences that fit with the format.

I guess that the effective thing would be that instead of trying to make each round more extreme than the last, whoever is round master should start the reviews before the submission deadline to get an idea of how much time they’ll need for the writeups and base the level of detail off of that. If they’re uninspired they can keep them short, if they have a lot of free time they can have some long ones, and if they feel a Photoshopped showcase is the main thing they want to do with their time then that’s alright as well. I feel like the community would be happy as long as the reviews are fair and fitting for the cars, whether they’re in a two sentence spiel or a multi-paragraph story.

TL;DR - People need a decent timeline to make sure to have time to make the car and roundmasters shouldn’t feel like they need to take the reviews to the next level for every round.

3 Likes
2994

I think the responses have well illustrated why the fundamental CSR format shouldn’t be altered: aiming for a week turnaround, no limit on entries (since it seems to be around 2 dozen…). Id be against it myself.

But I would be all for establishing not the same thing but other kinds of challenges along a certain premise. Darkshine has adapted the concept of the round master and champions pick, so maybe we should add some more. I have a few ideas brewing already but was just gauging the atmosphere before kicking anything off.

5 Likes
2995

Well toss em out and lets converse. I implemented the champs pick as a way of keeping the rules “fair” while opening up the possibilty of two types of builds one to appeal to the previous champ who wrote the rules or try to out tune the other entries. Unfortuantly my challenges are generally kept simple and as madrias pointed out min-maxing is the only way to be competitive in my comps and if u follow company lore u prob have no chance. Which without completly changing the format of my 2 challenges will not change. (Its hard when 5-10 races held so far have been won by one person) I will admit i stole the idea for my challenges from here.

edit. If i had to vote i would say leave the csr the way it is. I do however think its time for the grannies of Automation to converse and come up with a new intense difficulty challenge we can have 3 editors one does the maths, one does short/long blurbs, and one concentrates on making the results all pretty. This would also help eliminate the bugginess of recieving entrants as with how the game is atm myself and John are talking back and forwards comparing screenshots and fixing bugs that appear so that everything is fair

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2996

Excuse me while I blow the dust off of my keyboard in order to opine (edit: rather lengthily) here.

I, so far, have loved this competition. Even though I am only a sporadic competitor, I’m a diligent reader of the thread and follow the competition closely even when I sit out a round or two. I think the quick turn-around and getting a little tighter on the rules is a good idea, even if I am a victim of missing awesome rounds because of it.

Before I start criticizing anyone else, I will first look to myself. CSR 15 went over the time limits that are stated in the OP. I was working and just couldn’t get everything organized enough to crank out the levels of reviews that I found to be appropriate. I also had to juggle 25 cars and I wrote rather extensively on each until I basically told a little short story about the three finalists. That whole endeavor took me 5 days. I have no idea how much I actually wrote, and I posit that it was a substantial word count, but I did a staggered release of cuts that built anticipation to the final results.

Not to unduly give myself credit anywhere, but CSR 15 seemed to be a tipping point for this competition. 25 entries that were all given passing scrutiny and comments became the rule instead of the exception. Not to mention, I had asked for a few extensions to bring the quality of reviews that I did, and I still didn’t have time to proofread or provide pictures of the cars. It seems that the thread exploded from there with the next 5 subsequent rounds following the trend of ever increasing quality.

I had to scroll way back to June 22, 2016 to see when I actually posted the finished result, 72 hours after when the rules should have demanded it. However, since then we have only seen 4 rounds be completed and a fifth in the judging stage. 86 days have passed since then. By the rules we should have seen at least 10 more rounds, if not more. In the first 6 months of the competition, we had 15 rounds. In the three months since we’ve only seen an additional 5. That’s quite the delay.

Now obviously this challenge has evolved substantially since @strop created it, and that’s a good thing. This competition got ridiculously intense and the passing-of-the-torch strategy keeps it alive and keeps the community involved, for when it ends another round will emerge and the community will carry the banner forwards. It is basically a guarantee that there will always be a good challenge running.

My concern is that the level of detail the hosts have gone into, myself included, is becoming counter-intuitive to the original purpose of this thread. [quote=“strop, post:1, topic:6447”]
I’m just shooting for some light, not-too-involved fun that can keep us ticking over.
[/quote]
That is, unfortunately, not what this thread is anymore.

Now I like the more developed competitions and I really like the fact that people are taking this very seriously, but the challenges that used to populate their own threads seem to now be created as a round in here. This has a two-fold effect. The old style challenges that used to populate the forums have gone missing and this thread is substantially slowing down.

If I missed a round here I used to be able to pop over to another simultaneously running independent challenge and crank out a car in the meantime knowing that I could catch the next CSR round the next week. That’s no longer true on either front. Currently the only car challenges actively running to my knowledge are all racing series based. No one is trying to get us to build the best city-car or truck outside of this thread. Everyone is holding their ideas in the hopes that they win this round and get to write the next rules. That’s fine, but for it to be effective, we need to move quickly so that those various challenges can be published. Waiting a month for the next set of rules defeats the purpose of this challenge in its entirety.

Going back to quick rounds will diminish the level of competition and the depth the round master can go into, and I fully acknowledge that. However, that quick-fire style is why this list exists: [quote=“strop, post:1, topic:6447”]
Previous Winners:

nialloftara
8bs
Dragawn
Leonardo9613
titleguy1
asdren
Sebesseg
koolkei
AirJordan
DeusExMackia
oppositelock
phale
HowlerAutomotive
KLinardo
thecarlover
Dragawn -> strop
Der_Bayer_von_Awesome
Rk38 & koolkei
phale ->Kubboz
[/quote]
Some of those names have never appeared in a challenge victory ever before, but the variety and fast turnover allowed people to be competitive because the experience of the veterans was balanced out by the uniqueness and quickly varied theme. That’s starting to die out and the most competitive vehicles are starting to only come from the familiar names again.

I do think we need to decide whether we want to stick with the original intent or let the evolution keep rolling to the point that this will become the only place to get your stats-based build challenges. I think we can have our cake and eat it too if we make this a quickly moving thread again while encouraging more in-depth challenges to independently populate the #community-challenges-competitions topic once more. At bare minimum, this competition has reinvigorated people’s desire to host good challenges. Now we just need it to expand from this thread.

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2997

Yes yes yes…exactly that! Very well written.

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2998

I do remember wanting to switch it up a bit after a while. By that I meant switching up the criteria a D premise, but that also came with switching up the lresentation and judging. That’s what blew things out.

Definitely a strong case for more recirculating challenges. How do people feel about one based on picking a) a single body each round b) two mismatched demographic targets (e.g. Super family, like the Panamera)?

1 Like
2999

Yes. Well said.

On a second note, if I felt I had enough free time, I would have already started an in-depth challenge that’s not directly racing… But with school and work and other family events (including a friend’s recent wedding), I don’t have that free time right now. (I’m barely getting my company story done that I wanted to post a week ago)

Maybe between semesters…

2 Likes
3000

I’m not sure I’m following you here.

I’m right there with you.

Can you explain this more?

1 Like
3001

Well, there is no denying the passion and engagement from the participants as reflected by the depth of the arguments promoted regarding the future challenges, but I will try to keep this short.

  • The quick and easy format and turnover I believe is primary contributor to the popularity. If it works, don’t mess with it.
  • Most of these could be ran as separate challenges, so this is perhaps a good opportunity to do a “light” version of a challenge you have planned
  • Most standalone challenges have longer deadlines, and it can get harder to pay attention. When a challenge has gone on for more than 3 weeks I will admit I forget much of what has happened there
  • Some have more spare time than others. If you are the roundmaster and don’t have much time to spare, do very short results to keep time. No one will shoot you for it :slight_smile:

Tl;dr: I like the short & sweet timeline, and hope we can stay at that

2 Likes
3002

personally i dont mind current situation although some round went way too far.

for submitting time we can make it just 3 days and this short period could be very effective if the deadline is on saturday assuming everyone already off in friday and in sunday the round master do most reviews. i know some of you dont want make it bland car, review, or challenge and we do have other thing to do but we dont want stagnant the round way too long especially waiting for the reviews.

i’d suggest that roundmaster must post date when the reviews gonna be published and all must published less than 24 hours and no more than that. if round master cant fulfill his responbility we can do either poll or just select the 2nd best from previous round

3003

I don’t mean to criticise you too harshly here, but I do believe you are doing an injustice to the earlier rounds by saying this. The round before yours had 24 entrants. Two rounds prior, @phale did pictures plus half a page of review for 19 cars. The round before that had 18 entrants with pictures and blurbs and several photoshopped posters for entries. And so on. The CSR has been getting bigger, prettier and more prestigious for a long time and while it has really exploded in scope in the past couple of rounds, there is no one person who could claim credit for that. Not even @strop, who made it possible with his excellent ruleset.

The fact this bothers me enough that I started writing words into the internet is testament to the status of the CSR. Hosting a challenge, especially a good one, is a massive amount of work. But the CSR turns it into a “heavy lies the crown” experience - yes, you’re going to be buried in submissions, have to re-scrutineer a quarter of them several times and spend the better part of your week(s) writing reviews but you earned it by being the King of the previous round. And it isn’t just some passing thing. Your name will be chiseled for months to come into the First Post of the CSR and many heart shaped buttons will be pressed if you Really Pull It Off.

I would pose that the prestige also gives people a much needed boost of confidence or just a kick in the pants to get things done. Based on posts in this thread several people have ideas turning around in their head that they consider worthy of turning into a challenge. But they’re waiting to win the CSR to do them. Because if they won, that would prove they’re really good at this thing which means their ruleset is probably also pretty solid and everybody would have a good time.

What I mean to say by all this - I think it is a good thing that the CSR is such a big and well regarded staple. It makes people put more thought (not necessarily more time!) into their tech, looks and presentations which helps us learn new things about the game. The high-effort presentations really juice up the thread and competition. The winners may go on with renewed vigor to host their own threads (case in point the DBR). It seems like it would be a step back to do away with all that just for more throughput.

Having said that, it does seem reasonable to review the time limit to keep a reasonable pace. I would postulate that one week for submissions and one week for reviews should be plenty. That way, there is guaranteed to be a weekend in both stages, one for busy people to enter and the other for the busy roundmaster to review. And it wouldn’t be too long of a wait if someone misses the deadline.

I would also echo the sentiment that not every round has to be more awesome than the last. If someone does a quick pictures and short blurbs thing in a week, that’s good. If the next person goes all out with photoshops, excel conditional formatting and youtube reviews told in interpretive dance with 3D printed contestants as props, that is also cool and good. Maybe not cool, because interpretive dance, but the point stands. But they should choose their methods so they could pull it off in two weeks - and if they have some even MORE awesome but time consuming ideas for reviewing cars, maybe they should consider holding onto those and following up with a separate challenge thread.

The CSR having grown into what it is, there might be room for a quicker pass-it-forward challenge, but if it were to keep to a weekly schedule I would propose these points:

  • Always two rulesets ready to go - one for “this” week, the other in waiting for next week. The winner chooses the rules for the round after the next one, not the next one. That means the thread doesn’t start until two rulesets are ready with two round masters willing to run them in turn.

  • Cutoffs on specific days of the week. I propose:

  • Reviews have to be posted by Saturday midnight. If reviews are not posted by Saturday night, there is eternal shame on the round master and the car with the most Likes on a single post (not combined over several posts to prevent spamming) wins and posts new rules. If two cars have an equal amount of hearts, the earlier post wins. If there are no presentation posts or no likes, there is eternal shame on all involved and the new ruleset is posted on a first come, first serve basis. I trust peer vigilance will ensure hearts are tallied in a timely and fair fashion.
  • As far as reviews, blurbs are fine. Blurbs and pictures are better. If you can’t do all cars in time, do the top five or top three. If you can’t do the top three, eternal shame.
  • The new ruleset is picked by the winner and has to be posted by Sunday midnight at latest. Earlier is better. The timezone is determined by whoever starts the thread and stands, no matter where anyone lives. If ruleset isn’t posted by Sunday midnight, it is first come, first serve to post new rules and eternal shame on the person who should have posted the ruleset. There will be no editing of posts to claim rights to the ruleset.
  • Cars to be built and submitted by Wednesday midnight. If you miss it, you are out. If your car fails scrutineering, you are out. There is no time to go back and forth troubleshooting and resubmitting for broken rules or missing mods, so all mods should always be allowed except the stupid Barth and repositioned engines crap. If your car is broken or uses the stupid Barth or repositioned engines crap, you guessed it, you are out.

In order to keep people from becoming too precious or too involved, the challenge name should reflect the fleeting importance and lifespan of the entries. I would call it The Car Rental Round.

I would have posted this myself perhaps but I don’t have enough free time to keep an eye on another challenge, let alone run one of the opening rounds. If someone likes the premise, you are welcome to steal the rules and post it yourself, though I would appeciate an honourable mention.

I would also note that any round masters who miss the deadline and are overruled with the above guidelines may want to reveal their favourite (too) late. It won’t technically be a victory, nor allow the author of the favourite to post the new rules (and clearly that is the round master’s fault), but at least they’ll know and maybe get a note in the Jet Li corner of the Opening Post. Because they would have win.

3 Likes
3004

I think you missed the point of my qualifier explicitly not giving myself credit for what this competition morphed into. Round 15 happened to be where things began to really slow down and I used my own round as an example of going over time limits because I knew how difficult it was to just write what I did.

I didn’t want to use another round as an example, otherwise it would sound as if I was criticizing another round master as being the one that got the ball rolling on what we are now discussing.

If it sounded like I was taking credit for the evolution of CSR I apologize, because nothing could be further from the truth. I took inspiration from those who went before me and felt that I had a reputation to uphold as the current steward of an amazing competition.

I hope that clarifies my statement.

3005

so yeah CSR should be fast placed with simple reviews

3006

I’m a bit out of the picture due to weekend seminar (second one in two weeks, out of four in four weeks!!!) But that does not appear to be the consensus. It seems most people enjoy the sheer amount of effort that goes into it.

The risk of having two Rolling rulesets is that this removes the incentive for current round master to get things done so we can start with the next. I’m not sure how to optimise this.

I’ll explain things a bit better when I’m at a computer and not getting my brain fried by lectures.

3 Likes